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The Merchant’s party arrived at the festival to find it a-bustle with worldly distractions, the likes of which must be kept from a betrothed virgin. Daughter retired to a guest chamber, minded by her old Nurse, and all would have been well had not the Nurse loved her so much.
“I have to go out,” said Nurse, “and attend to preparations for the wedding. You will stay in and attend to your prayers.”
“Oh, I have prayed my whole life long,” said the girl. “Our Virgin Mother is bored with my prayers. My heart is what needs attending, to prepare it for love.”
“Moony child!” Nurse exclaimed. She sighed. Her task would have to wait. “It’s not your heart that needs preparing, but the threshold to your womb. Weddings are about joining husband and wife, and a certain unpleasant friction results if you are not ready.” Nurse herself had never married but was well enough acquainted with love’s friction.
At that they had a conversation about emollients, oils, perfumes and clean linen. Daughter found it instructive if scary. After which Nurse left.
Daughter sat and brooded in front of the closed door through which Nurse had gone. It barred the way with wooden indifference. How she missed the familiar doors of home, watchful and attentive guardians who passed her room to room, through one to the other, outside and back in again. When they shut, some did so with sternness because they knew what was best. Others, mischievous ones, lured her through to places she wasn’t meant to go. But this alien door took no notice of Daughter at all. It stood blindly, rough and incurious.
—I’m here. But it seems like I’m not here, Daughter thought, like I’m invisible.
She gazed around the room, every bit of it a foreign space that ignored her. Or did it overlook her? Did it know she was here? Not one slate on the floor acknowledged her foot. Not one affable corner or kindly wall glanced her way. In this place, she was not real. She was not solid.
“Wake up and attend me!” Daughter jested. Or was she scolding? A bit of both. She pushed hard against the door. It moved, as heavy as a dead thing.
Daughter peeked into a stone corridor. When her party had first arrived, the hall had filled with the Merchant shouting at his knights, with a flurry of servants stowing trunks and bags. Now the passageway stood empty and remote. Where had all her people gone? Run off to have a merry time while she, the bride, was left to be alone in a strange world that did not know her.
“This is how it feels to be an angel,” Daughter said in astonishment.
Everyone knew angels visited and moved among people, but heavenly strangers could not be seen or heard or touched. Daughter’s heart filled with wonder. To walk in the world, yet not be of it. To know the world, but not be known.
—One day is given me.— The thought came unbidden to the Merchant’s Daughter. Her blood quickened. One day between maidenhood and marriage. One day between father and bridegroom.
—Yesterday I was a child, she thought with solemnity, and tomorrow I shall be a wife. Today I am a visiting angel.
Daughter removed from the trunk her second-best dress, a green silk brocade that, secretly, she favored more than the best dress in which she was to be married. Its green was the color of high summer, when light beats like a hammer on the leaves. Daughter put on this dress which made her feel brave. She hid in her pocket a purse of coins which made her feel sensible. And she ran away.
Not forever. Just for one day.